ISSUE 268 : Wednesday, October 21, 2009

I could tell the minute the computer struck 12 midnight. In the space of one digital click, I had become "old." At precisely 12:01am, October 19, 2009 I turned 65. I didn't expect to feel physically different than when I was 64, but I did, with all of the baggage society drops on your ass. Like my daughter saying, "Daddy, now that you are retired you will have much more time to play with me, right?" Uh boy. It takes having a 7yr. old you can't keep up with to realize you're no longer a "playah" but just a tired old man. Oh well. It probably didn't take 65 years to become that, but who has time to keep track?

I most certainly did not expect to be alive this long. Hanging out in freight yards and the killing fields of Watts and the South Bronx. Sweating my way through the cesspools of South East Asia and South America to work Uncle Sam's dirty tricks. Driving my black on black Corvette twice as fast as the law allows. None of these habits are calibrated to get you to 65 in one piece. Yet it seems as though I made it.

I only have a few regrets. But they're big ones. I seem to have lost my soul someplace. It may show up, it may not. I know the great love of my life is gone forever. I miss New York with all my heart.

Tons of people wished me "Happy Birthday." Thank you, Mary Baum and Derek Walker. I caught up with the author of the great "Wings of Man" campaign, Bill Waites, and Tommy Mims, the smartest black man I have ever known, who made a fortune in the African Investment markets. I was present at a meeting where a group of bar owners made the decision to sponsor a law making it mandatory for drinking establishments to confiscate the car keys of anyone too drunk to drive, or report them to the police. That was a great birthday gift.

Monday, October 19, 2009 was not just another day for me. Just about everything that could go wrong in the activities of the day did go wrong in the activities of the day. But Ag and I laughed it off the way we always do. Having one or two good friends is a blessing of long life. ("Hayee, Frankie Two-Ties, Ovah deh!" ) And knowing exactly what you want to do with the rest of that life is a curse, because nobody has that much time given or promised. But I do know exactly what I want to do.

I have given the subject a really long time, in terms of thought and deliberation. For years people have been whispering in my ear, or shouting across a crowded room, "You really need to write a book." "You really have a story to tell." "You really need to tell people about this," and on and on. But writing ones memoirs is such a cliché.

Then there is the other contingent. "You can't let them get away with this." "You need to make Madison Avenue pay." "You really should sue the bastards, for what they did to you." Word on the street is that even the great Cyrus Mehri is having a hard time making a discrimination case against Madison Avenue.

So although both of these options have their apparent benefits for the amusement and enrichment of others, there seems to be little at the end of both of these long-term endeavors that holds much fun or even interest for me.

Until you consider the third line of mischief. A little ditty the FCC likes to call "withholding of tax exemption for accused discrimination," an interesting little addendum to the Federal Communications Act. Now when you combine this with one and two, all sorts of interesting things start to pop up.

I don't miss Madison Avenue. My decision to leave advertising at age 65 was one of the smartest things I've ever done. Now I walk a little taller.